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NATURAL THEOLOGY 



CHAPTER I 



STATE OF THE ARGUMENT. 



In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a 

 itone, and were asked how the stone came to be there, I 

 might possibly answer, that for any thing I knew to the 

 contrary it had lain there for ever ; nor would it, perhaps, 

 be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But sup- 

 pose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be 

 inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I 

 should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, 

 that for any thing I knew the watch might have always 

 been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the 

 watch as well as for the stone ; why is it not as admissible 

 in the second case as in the first ? For this reason, and for 

 no other, namely, that when we come to inspect the watch> 

 we perceive — what we could not discover in the stone — that 

 its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, 

 e. g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce mo- 

 tion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour 

 of the day ; that if the difierent parts had been differently 

 shaped from what they are, or placed after any other man 

 ner or m any other order than that in which they are placed, 

 either no motion at all would have been carried on in the 

 machine, or none which would have answered the use that 

 is now served by it. To reckon up a few of the plainest of 

 these parts and of their offices, all tending to one result : 

 We see a cylindrical box containing a coiled elastic spring, 



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